It’s been a while. I know. The last video we posted was the out-of-sequence rescue at sea and then… nothing. Why haven’t I finished editing the rest of our travel videos? Where are we? Have we stopped traveling? Will there be more videos? What’s next?
The answer to just about all of the questions that we’ve gotten (and asked ourselves) is that we just don’t (or didn’t) know. But I will try to share a little about what has been going on, what we are up to, and what we’ve been thinking.
Last July, we sold our boat and ended our sailing adventure. While it was bitter-sweet, it seemed like it was the right time to move on and get one more big trip under our belts before going back to work. With a few more travel dollars left in the bank, we bought our sidecar rig and headed off to Europe. That trip was … interesting. Turns out that traveling with your home is way better (and cheaper) than living out of a suitcase. And a boat is MUCH more comfortable than a motorcycle. However, we saw some amazing places and ended up having a great time in spite of our incredible lack of planning and the ridiculous mode of transportation we chose. But after 2 months and looming winter, we were ready to get home. We were also fully and utterly BROKE. So we convinced friends of ours, the Captain and Mate of a 67-foot Discovery to let us crew with them back across the Atlantic. The crossing was uneventful until 500 miles from Martinique when we received a Mayday call. And that, I think, brings us back to where the videos left off.
Since then, we have been trying to figure out what our new lives look like. And I think we are finally getting closer to an answer.
Where are we now?
We’ve been a bit homeless since Christmas. We spent time traveling around the country to see friends and family that we have neglected. We then spent 4 months trying to put down roots in North Carolina. But our careers got us on the move again and relocated us to Chicago. Will is working in machine learning for self-driving cars (pretty cool!) and I’m back in management consulting for pharma companies (slightly less cool). So now we are mid-westerners, at least for a little while.
Wait, you’re back to work? What about traveling? What about the vlog?
I know. I’m not happy about it and would also rather be back on our boat and traveling around the world. But right now, we have chosen to focus on our careers, hopefully start a family, and re-build our savings so that we can head off again at some point. How adult of us…
And I’m not going to lie, being back at work has been one of the hardest transitions I’ve ever faced. It was initially crushing to go from our outdoor lives to sitting behind a computer in a window-less conference room for 8 to 12 hours a day. To go from the very real stressors of living on a boat and weathering dangerous conditions to the more mundane anxieties of preparing for client meetings and churning out power point slides. Not surprisingly, I’ve struggled to reconcile this new reality with memories of our time traveling. My solution has been to not think about our trip and instead focus on building our new life. Going back through videos I shot and all of our pictures was initially just too painful, so I boxed it all up. Hence the lack of updates. Not a great excuse for leaving you all in the dark, I know.
But now we have started to settle in to our new normal and are getting over the shock of our new lives. I’m beginning to be hopeful that just because we are back in corporate America, our adventures are not completely over. This long overdue post is the beginning of marrying our time traveling with our time working and I hope to be able to continue the Monday Never story. What that will look like, I’m not sure. How often I’ll post updates, I’m also not sure. If you all have any suggestions though, I’m all ears.
This blog post is the beginning of that attempt. Up next, I’ll tackle the 40 hours of uncut footage I have left to edit from our last few months of travel.
Will we still sail?
Yes! Of course. Turns out, sailing is now forever in our blood. So we have a boat share for the summer and plan to maximize our time on Lake Michigan. We’ll be sailing every weekend – and if you are in the Chicago area, we’d love to meet you! We are planning a sailing get-together once the weather is solidly nice and will post about that on Facebook/Instagram once we work out the details.
Thank you all for coming along this journey with us! We hope to be able to share many more stories with you again soon.
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